May 12, 2011

What Good Is Sitting Alone in Your Room? Cabaret Is a Steal By ERIK PIEPENBURG

Fans of the American Songbook can get their fix of torch songs and 11 o’clock numbers on almost any night in New York. This weekend alone brings the husband-and-wife duo of Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie to the Café Carlyle; K T Sullivan saluting Dorothy Fields at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel; and Nnenna Freelon covering songs made popular by Lena Horne at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency.

But in tough economic times a night at one of those venerable Manhattan rooms can cost a small fortune. Seats at the Carlyle, for example, are $40 to $135; add cocktails and dinner, and a night out for two requires a few hundred dollars. Luckily, for thrifty lovers of standards there are several night spots in New York where the repertory is being sung for a song.

At the 70-seat cabaret theater at the Duplex in the West Village, the cover charge is never more than $20 and a moderately priced two-drink minimum.  On a recent night the singer Colleen McHugh and a jazz trio — the pianist Chuck Larkin, the guitarist Sean Harkness and the bassist Steve Doyle — performed an intimate show that included Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again” and Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern’s “April Fooled Me.”

At the Laurie Beechman Theater, a 100-seat space in Clinton, the actress Emily Bergl began a recent evening by asking the audience, “Do you ever feel you were born in the wrong era?”

 “Yes!” shouted the crowd. And with that Ms. Bergl and her pianist, G. Scott Lacy, jump-kicked into a 90-minute set that included Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy” and the Fats Waller classic “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

Bob Bokor, who was in the front row, said afterward: “I’m a dance music and ’70s rock guy. This isn’t normally my style. But I wanted a change. I enjoyed it.”

Sidney Myer, the booking manager at Don’t Tell Mama, a cabaret space on West 46th Street in the theater district, described the Duplex and the Beechman — as well as the Metropolitan Room, Le Poisson Rouge, Joe’s Pub and Cast Party at Birdland — as proving grounds for performers who come to New York with nothing more than a voice and a dream.

“Traditionally, cabaret in New York is the first and only door that’s open to people when they come here,” Mr. Myer said. “Before anyone knows anyone to put them in a show, they put themselves in their own show.”

That’s a bonus for audiences with limited funds. A show at Don’t Tell Mama, Mr. Myer said, “costs less than parking your car.” Ms. McHugh said that her show was “less than a soda and movie tickets.” And both the Duplex and Don’t Tell Mama offer separate piano bars with no cover.

For Ms. McHugh, 43, cabaret lets her indulge in music she’s come to feel passionate about. “I’d always been a Top 40 girl growing up as a child of the ’80s,” she said.  “But this is always the soundtrack that was on in the background.”

The American Songbook is an umbrella term for popular music from the ’20s through the ’60s, whether from Broadway, Tin Pan Alley or Hollywood. Its songwriters include the likes of Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, with Fields being one of the few women in the overwhelmingly male bunch.

“ ‘The American Songbook’ sounds like this thing that your mom liked or you were supposed to study in college,” said Ms. McHugh, who works by day as a writer and producer at WNET-TV.  “But then people say, oh, ‘Stormy Weather’? I love that. That’s Harold Arlen? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Harold Arlen.’  Then I do a Harold Arlen show, and my friends that I force to come love every song.”

During Ms. Bergl’s show, perhaps as a nod to the younger people there who knew her from appearances on “Desperate Housewives,” she stripped from a full-length gown into a leg-baring beaded unitard and delivered a torch-song version of Madonna’s “Material Girl.” The performance cost $20, with a $15 food-and-drink minimum.

“At one point in time it was cheaper to see a Broadway show than it was to see a movie,” Ms. Bergl, 36, said before her performance.  “I want to do a show where you can spend $20 or $25 to get in, maybe you have to buy a couple of drinks, but you have an evening of live entertainment.”

For many singers the downtown cabaret scene is a good fit, though performing in a more gilded room remains an aspiration. “I have my dreams-slash-delusions of grandeur of moving my way uptown, like the Jeffersons,” Ms. McHugh said.  “But being downtown and having this opportunity to be at an accessible and affordable place that lets me try out new material every month is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

Not that cheap comes at the expense of quality.

“There are so many people working in these clubs that have Broadway credits,” Mr. Myer said.  “When you walk into a piano bar you’re hearing talent that you’d hear in another setting for more money.  But the economy has prevented people from having their own showcase.”

He continued: “Remember, you don’t start out as an oak at the Oak Room.  You were an acorn somewhere first.”

CAST PARTY AT BIRDLAND 315 West 44th Street, Clinton; (212) 581-3080, castpartynyc.com.

DON’T TELL MAMA 343 West 46th Street, Clinton; (212) 757-0788, donttellmamanyc.com.

THE DUPLEX 61 Christopher Street, at Seventh Avenue South, West Village; (212) 255-5438, theduplex.com.

JOE’S PUB 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village; (212) 967-7555, joespub.com.

LAURIE BEECHMAN THEATER 407 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 695-6909, westbankcafe.com.

LE POISSON ROUGE 158 Bleecker Street, near Thompson Street, Greenwich Village; (212) 505-3474, lepoissonrouge.com.

METROPOLITAN ROOM 34 West 22nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 206-0440, metropolitanroom.com.